SOCHI, December 8 (R-Sport, James Ellingworth) - Japan's Mao Asada sealed her third Grand Prix Finals figure skating title after her main rival, Ashley Wagner of America, foundered with two falls in Saturday's free skate.
Asada skated a graceful routine to Swan Lake that was reminiscent of the double world champion at her peak in her last finals appearance, a gold-medal performance in South Korea in 2009.
"I wanted to make sure I had all the elements right without any mistakes, to have a solid program."
"There were no major mistakes so that's a great takeaway from today."
Her score was a season-best 196.80 to win by a vast margin of almost 15 points.
Wagner's wins at the Four Continents championship and two Grands Prix this year have gone some way to freeing her of the self-applied tag of "almost girl," but she failed to round out 2012 in style, falling twice and scoring well short of her best.
The Californian tumbled on a triple loop before a big fall on the second part of a triple loop-double axel combination put her in danger of losing second place, which she held thanks to errors from other skaters.
"Today was definitely not my best performance, but overall I'm happy that I was able to keep it together," she said.
"The axel was a bit of a freak fall, but to have such a hard fall and then go and do a triple flip of that quality is definitely something that I can take away from this competition," said Wagner, who wore a large ice pack at the press conference after her hard fall on the double axel.
"For me, I like to go big or go home, so when I fall, I fall really hard," she said, adding she may have to undergo an X-ray on her hip.
Japan's Akiko Suzuki would have overtaken Wagner but for a fall on a triple flip that left her 1.16 points off the American's score.
"The first two jumps were high quality," she said. "Things started to fall apart a little bit, and I couldn't make the adjustments that I needed to make."
Kiira Korpi was the first Finn to reach the finals, but failed to get a debut podium place as mistakes on a triple salchow-double loop-double toeloop combination counted against her, leaving her on 174.94.
Fifteen-year-old prodigy Elizaveta Tuktamysheva was flying the flag for Russia in the event and skated her way to a total 173.75, recovering well after awkward landings early on.
Other skaters' mistakes meant the Russian posted the second-best free skate score, but it was not enough to compensate for her error-strewn short program.
Christina Gao of the United States failed to improve after a poor short program, and scored a total of 154.54, well below her usual standards, after a skate in which she fell on a triple flip.
Gao was in the finals as a replacement for Russian prodigy Julia Lipnitskaia, who suffered concussion.
Free skates in the other three disciplines are later Saturday.
